Words of Wisdom

Here are some quotes I have found that offer inspiration for the many different areas of life. If you have other words of wisdom that you would like to share, please leave them in the comments.

This page has been created to correspond with the book, Reclaim Your Creative Soul: The secrets to organizing your full-time life to make room for your craft. If you came here without reading the book first, I encourage you to download it today. It is not only an inspiring read for creating order in all areas of your life, it would also support me as an author. Find out more information at crissilangwell.com/creative-soul.

ENCOURAGEMENT

“When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.” ~ Alexander Graham Bell

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.” ~ David Allen

“In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.” ~ Tony Robbins

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” ~ Thomas A. Edison

“Learn from the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future, and live in the only moment of time over which you have any control: now.” ~ Denis Waitley

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.” ~ Paulo Coelho in The Alchemist

“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future . . . but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.” ~ Buddha

“What you thought before has led to every choice you have made, and this adds up to you at this moment. If you want to change who you are physically, mentally, and spiritually, you will have to change what you think.” ~ Dr. Patrick Gentempo

“By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you most want to be. Put your future in good hands — your own.” ~ Mark Victor Hansen

“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” ~ Kenji Miyazawa

“Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines.” ~ Robert Schuller

“Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.” ~ Thomas J. Watson

“A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done.” ~ Vince Lombardi

CREATIVITY

“There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun.” ~ Pablo Picasso

“When you make music or write or create, it’s really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you’re writing about at the time.” ~ Lady Gaga

“To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.” ~ Osho

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.” ~ Martha Graham

“You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out.” ~ Steve Jobs

“The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing. ” ~ Ernest Hemingway

“If critics say your work stinks it’s because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by scaring you into conformity with their comfortable little standards. Standards so low that they can no longer be considered “dangerous” but set in place in their compartmental understandings.” ~ Jack Kerouac

DETERMINATION

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.” ~ Maya Angelou

“The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.” ~ Barack Obama

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci

“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.” ~ Edward Everett Hale

“The thing about a hero, is even when it doesn’t look like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, he’s going to keep digging, he’s going to keep trying to do right and make up for what’s gone before, just because that’s who he is.” ~ Joss Whedon

“The man who thinks he can and the man who thinks he can’t are both right. Which one are you?” ~ Henry Ford

“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever. That surrender, even the smallest act of giving up, stays with me. So when I feel like quitting, I ask myself, which would I rather live with?” ~ Lance Armstrong

CAREER

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” ~ Alice Walker

“Our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.” ~ M. Scott Peck

“Risk something or forever sit with your dreams.” ~ Herb Brooks

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” ~ Steve Jobs

“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” ~ William James

“There is only one way to avoid criticism: Do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” ~ Aristotle

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you too can become great.” ~ Mark Twain

“Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.” ~ Charles Swindoll